Thursday, June 2, 2011

Love and other Drugs

What is love? It is very famous question we are often asked about. A lot of people try to define what love is. Some say love is a feeling of giving care to other people, some say it is a biological response towards others, and some say it is nature’s way of tricking people into reproducing.

But how much do we really know about love? Does love can be explained by science? Or it’s just a feeling that really can’t be explained?

Defining love using science is like explaining the color red to a blind man by saying that it is about 650 nm of electomagnetic radiation. It is easy to define but it’s hard to understand. But still many researchers, philosophers and even historians try to define the nature of love. And they all agreed that love is virtue of representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection.

Psychology has also done lot of dissection about love. They define love as an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment that can occur between two or more individuals such as family, friends and opposite sex that bonds and connects them in a unified link of trust, intimacy and interdependence.

There are said to be 6 love styles proposed by John Lee from the book "Colors of Love". Those are Eros (romantic love),Ludus (love as game), Storge (platonic love) ,Pragma (practical love) Mania (obsessive love) and Agape (spiritual love) . All of us has experience some of those love styles. Depending on what level or depth it might be.

Psychologists have shown it takes between 90 seconds and 4 minutes to decide if you fancy someone. Cognitive, biological and external factor influenced us to feel love. So what really pushes us to feel that emotion?

Chemicals in the brain are responsible for feeling of love.Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin that stimulates the brain's pleasure center.

Certainly love is influenced by hormones. Chemical movements in the brain are the one to blame. We are drugged by those chemicals to feel love on other person. It’s not in our hands to fall in love. We didn’t command our heart to feel that magical feeling. We believed we’re choosing a partner. But think again. Maybe we are just happy victims of nature’s lovely plan.